"6," est-ce la porte par laquelle on arrive enfin a la sagesse, ou pas du tout?
is for the decade in which I spent my childhood and for the age at which I realized my time is finite
Examining the unexamined life.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
OS: (O)nly in (S)eattle: Call Eric L. a Chink
Call me a "chink," it's O.K.
Call someone a "cracker" or "whitey," give me a "High 5,"
Call someone a "cracker" or "whitey," give me a "High 5,"
Famed for being the home of Boeing, amazon, Microsoft, Starbuck's, etc.
Seattle
and
Only in Seattle
could you have a public figure like Eric Liu actually chose to write for a newspaper (The Stranger) several months after it has used used the racial slur "chink."
He must either enjoy being called a chink or maintain that he is-- after all--only an accidental Asian.
Call me a "chink," it's O.K.
If I don't mind, why should others?
O
"O" c'est pour La Grande Odalisque
"O" c'est l'Orient aussi.
"O" c'est "ostrich" (en anglais).
"O" compose un cercle.
"O" c'est "ostrich" (en anglais).
"O" compose un cercle.
N
I have never heard an Hispanic-American say, or imply, that s/he is having a bad day because (1) Anglo-Americans invaded Mexico in the mid-19th century and (2) s/he and is discriminated against all the time.
C
What unites people of color is the eagerness of the "fair sex" to dye its hair a color other than its natural color.
La faute c'est a Voltaire.
A and C
The "C" is not for courage.
Le "C" c'est pas pour le courage.
Seattle, American capital of self-censorship.
Seattle, capitale americaine de l'auto-censure.
Seattle, capitale americaine de l'auto-censure.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Equality
Equality
If you really believe in equality, don't treat others with respect and as having equal worth as yourself. Don't set yourself up as master and all "others" as slaves.
They are not stupid, bad, puny, pathetic, beneath your contempt, and/or threatening.
Don't use history as a rationalization for making them so.
Egalite
They are not stupid, bad, puny, pathetic, beneath your contempt, and/or threatening.
Don't use history as a rationalization for making them so.
Egalite
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
So much for equality
"We demand our rights!"
and "You don't have a right (to speak)."
I am dismayed at out often I hear of how blacks have been denied and/or continue to be denied of freedom when at the same time I witness some African-Americans aggressively precluding others from enjoying the same freedoms that they claim are denied to them by society (white people).
As in being treated with respect. Or being allowed to express an opinion different from their own. Or defending their rights.
As in being treated with respect. Or being allowed to express an opinion different from their own. Or defending their rights.
Whether it's on a bus where a person will take up two seats. I usually sit on the window side of the double seat to allow others to sit down (next to me). I witness many African-Americans, and not as many others, will sit next to me--probably because I am of small physical stature. When and if I get off the bus, I have noticed them then take up both seats, sitting on the outer (aisle) side and putting their belongings on the other (window) side.
Or mercilessly bossing people of a different skin color around.
Or at my health club the other morning I was doing some yoga in a studio when a young black man wearing street clothes decided to lie on the floor on a yoga mat and take a snooze for an hour. While I had gone out to go to the bathroom, he had apparently woken up and decided the studio would be a nice place just to relax and listen to music as well, but not with his mp3 player but through the studio's sound system.
I asked him if he could turn it off as this was a yoga classroom (and a place to work-out). Initially he had said, "O.K. Go turn it down yourself." Minutes later he was accusing me in an angry, confrontational manner of "acting as if I had the right [to have the room quiet/without music."
In fact, it seems that many if not most of the African-Americans seem oblivious to the fact people of other colors and backgrounds may be adversely affected by loud behavior and these same people also have the right to voice their need for a quiet environment free of shouting and screaming. In the interests of an equal society, it would be nice if everyone were aware of the needs of other groups and not just their particular group.
In fact, it seems that many if not most of the African-Americans seem oblivious to the fact people of other colors and backgrounds may be adversely affected by loud behavior and these same people also have the right to voice their need for a quiet environment free of shouting and screaming. In the interests of an equal society, it would be nice if everyone were aware of the needs of other groups and not just their particular group.
I wish I had the right to make a civil request without (fear of) being yelled at. It seemed as if he had first wanted quiet (and he got it) first. And then he wanted music "with a beat." And when he couldn't get it, he got upset, as if his rights were being trampled upon and that I was acting in an imperious fashion.
I have seen this happen to other people, including white women, who usually became very quiet, face ashen, voice trembling, almost pleading or close to tears.
Exactly what I felt that day. But I tried hard to cover up my distress. Not let him know I was close to coming unhinged. (He wants that. He wants to let me know he is powerful. As if I doubted it).
Exactly what I felt that day. But I tried hard to cover up my distress. Not let him know I was close to coming unhinged. (He wants that. He wants to let me know he is powerful. As if I doubted it).
Some people don't have an inkling why others might be afraid of them. It may not be racism.
And it is not as if the rank-and-file of the African-American community in this country has been especially supportive of rights for other minorities such as gays. (Their community leaders, whatever the degree to which they have acted out of personal conviction, have in any case made political alliances).
You don't have a right to get angry at me, but I have a right to get angry at you [when you is wrong and you knows i but won't admit it].
So much for equality.
No one in chicken Seattle will speak up, though.
No one in chicken Seattle will speak up, though.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Afraid of being afraid (or of admitting it to others)
You keep telling me I have an anger management problem, I am going to kick your ass real good.
And people are afraid, too. Too afraid to be afraid (or say that they are) because they'll be stigmatized as "racist."
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/03/blotter-a-slew-of-pikepine-assaults-and-muggings/
It's not just white people that are "the problem." African-Americans are part of the problem, too.
-Lily H.
No "Feel Sorry Day" for me
I am curious
why it is that everyday--in the U.S.--is a "Feel Sorry for Me Day" for African-Americans.
If I plastered a "Feel Sorry for Me" sign on my chest and walked around, I'd get a big kick (from others).
Dare to think the unthinkable...What is a kick in the seat compared to your own freedom?
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Defying West, Putin Formally Claims Crimea for Russia (N.Y. Times, March 18, 2014)
Defying West, Putin Formally Claims Crimea for Russia
MOSCOW — A defiant President Vladimir V. Putin claimed Crimea as a part of Russia on Tuesday, reversing what he described as a historic mistake made by the Soviet Union 60 years ago and brushing aside international condemnation that could leave Russia isolated for years to come.
Within minutes of delivering a passionate speech to Russia’s political elite, Mr. Putin cemented his pledge by signing a draft treaty with Crimean leaders to make the strategic Black Sea peninsula part of Russia. The events unfolded two days after Crimeans voted in a disputed referendum to break away from Ukraine. While the treaty signed Tuesday still needs parliamentary approval, that is regarded as a formality.
“Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia in the hearts and minds of people,” Mr. Putin declared in his address, delivered in the chandeliered St. George’s Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace before hundreds of members of Parliament, governors and others. His remarks, which lasted 47 minutes, were interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause, standing ovations and at the end chants of “Russia, Russia.” Some in the audience wiped tears from their eyes.
Reaching deep into Russian and Soviet history, Mr. Putin said he did not seek to divide Ukraine any further, but vowed that he would protect Russia’s national security from what he described as Western, and particularly American, actions that had left Russia feeling cornered.
He spoke as he has often in the past of the humiliations Russia has suffered in a world with one dominant superpower — from the NATO air war in Kosovo in 1999 against Moscow’s Serbian allies to the one in Libya that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 on what he called the false pretense of a humanitarian intervention.
Mr. Putin dipped into deep wells of emotion, starting with the 10th century baptism of Prince Vladimir, whose conversion to Orthodox Christianity transformed the kingdom then known as Rus, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left many Russians of his generation feeling that they had been stripped of their nation overnight.
“Millions of Russians went to bed in one country and woke up abroad,” he said. “Overnight, they were minorities in the former Soviet republics, and the Russian people became one of the biggest — if not the biggest — divided nation in the world.”
Assailing the West for what he has said were its broken promises, he said: “They cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back, presenting us with completed facts. That’s the way it was with the expansion of NATO in the east, with the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They always told us the same thing: ‘Well, this doesn’t involve you.’ ”
In a deepening clash of wills, Western reaction was swift. The White House condemned the move, which it said it would not recognize. Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, told Parliament on Tuesday that the crisis in Ukraine “is the most serious test of European security in the 21st century so far.”
“No amount of sham and perverse democratic process or skewed historical references can make up for the fact that this is an incursion into a sovereign state and a land grab of part of its territory with no respect for the law of that country or for international law,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel firmly rejected Moscow’s absorption of Crimea, a position she said was widely supported by international organizations including the United Nations and the European Council.
Putin Justifies Moves in Crimea
In his speech in Moscow, President Vladimir V. Putin defended Russia’s actions in Crimea by pointing out past Western ‘interventions,’ including Libya and Afghanistan, at length.
“The so-called referendum breached international law, the declaration of independence which the Russian president accepted yesterday was against international law, and the absorption into the Russian Federation is, in our firm opinion, also against international law,” Ms. Merkel told reporters in Berlin.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in Warsaw on Tuesday in a show of support for countries unnerved by the Russian incursion into Ukraine, rebutted Mr. Putin’s assertions. “Russia has offered a variety of arguments to justify what is nothing more than a land grab,” he said. “But the world has rejected those arguments.”
While Western sanctions in response to Sunday’s referendum on independence in Crimea had been relatively mild, American officials had already made clear they would ratchet up the pressure if Mr. Putin went ahead with annexation. The Obama administration is expected to react quickly with a new round of sanctions targeting three groups: Russian government officials, the Russian arms industry and Russians who work on behalf of government officials, the latter called “Russian government cronies” by a senior American official.
Mr. Putin brushed aside concerns about economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, saying the West had forced Russia’s hand. By supporting the political uprising that toppled Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, the United States and Europe crossed “a red line,” Mr. Putin said, forcing him to act to protect Crimea’s population from what he called “Russophobes and neo-Nazis” that had seized control in an illegal coup abetted by foreigners.
“If you press a spring too hard,” he said, “it will recoil.”
If there had been any doubt before Tuesday, Mr. Putin made clear that within what he considers his sphere of interest he would not be cowed by international pressure. And the speed of his moves in Crimea, redrawing an international border that has been recognized as part of an independent Ukraine since 1991, has been breathtaking.
Just three weeks after Russian special operations troops seized control of strategic locations on the peninsula, the authorities there organized and held a disputed referendum that paved the way for Tuesday’s treaty signing. Mr. Putin called the outcome of the vote — almost 97 percent in favor of secession —- “more than convincing.”
Mr. Putin acted despite the first of a series of threatened sanctions imposed by the United States, Canada and Europe on Monday. He did so using the same arguments that those countries used to justify the independence of Kosovo — which the West generally supported — including a passage from an Obama administration document establishing the legal rationale for recognizing that country.
Part of the speech also had an ominous tone, suggesting that Russian dissenters would be considered traitors siding with Russia’s adversaries. Mr. Putin has long suspected the United States of trying to stir up a democratic uprising in Russia along the lines of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and the Arab Spring rebellions.
“Some Western politicians already threaten us not only with sanctions but also with the potential for domestic problems,” he said. “I would like to know what they are implying — the actions of a certain fifth column, of various national traitors? Or should we expect that they will worsen the social and economic situation, and therefore provoke people’s discontent?
Mr. Putin also spoke of the radically changed circumstances since 1954, when Russia awarded Crimea to Ukraine. At that time, he said, “nobody could imagine that Russia and Ukraine could one day become different states.” After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia felt it was “robbed” of Crimea, he said.
He was at pains to rebut the central Western argument that events in Crimea had been directed by a conventional military intervention. Mr. Putin said Russia never exceeded its permitted troop strength of 25,000 soldiers in Crimea as part of the longstanding agreement on the stationing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
There had been no combat, he said, and he thanked Ukrainian soldiers who avoided bloodshed. “I cannot remember a single act of intervention without one single shot” being fired, he said.
However, within hours of that declaration, a group of soldiers opened fire while storming a modest Ukrainian military installation in Kubanskoye, near Simferopol. At least one Ukrainian soldier was injured and taken to a hospital, according to a Ukrainian officer inside the base and a spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, Vladislav Seleznev. The base appeared to be under control of the soldiers, who wore no insignia.
Buoyed by the crisis, Mr. Putin has vaulted past every line the United States and Europe have tried to draw in recent weeks. The White House indicated that it had not gone after some members of Mr. Putin’s inner circle to leave room for its next move, which the Americans and Europeans might now have to consider making sooner than they expected.
President Obama’s initial sanctions froze assets and banned travel for 11 Russian and Ukrainian figures, including Vladislav Y. Surkov, a longtime adviser to Mr. Putin; Dmitri O. Rogozin, a deputy prime minister of Russia; and Valentina I. Matviyenko, a Putin ally and the chairwoman of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s Parliament. The European Union followed with sanctions against 21 Russian and Ukrainian figures.
“We’re making it clear that there are consequences for their actions,” Mr. Obama said as he announced the sanctions. “We’ll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world.”
Over all, the Europeans targeted 10 Russian politicians, seven pro-Russian Crimeans, three Russian military officers in Crimea and the former leader of Ukraine’s Black Sea Fleet, who defected to Russia this month. But the Europeans declined to go after elite figures like Mr. Surkov and Mr. Rogozin out of reluctance to poke Mr. Putin too directly.
Asked whether the European Union had failed to match tough words with strong actions, Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, told journalists: “The U.S. is from Mars and Europe is from Venus. Get used to it.”
He noted that “Europe is closer and will therefore pay a bigger cost for sanctions against Russia.” He also pointed to Europe’s collective decision-making process.
“In the United States, one man takes a decision on the basis of an executive order,” Mr. Sikorski said, “whereas in Europe, for these measures to be legal, we need a consensus of 28 member states.”
The bravado in Moscow struck some American officials as bluster masking real concern about the potential financial bite of future sanctions, and there is some evidence that Russians are anxiously pulling tens of billions of dollars out of American accounts. Nearly $105 billion was shifted out of Treasury custodial accounts by foreign central banks or other institutions in the week that ended last Wednesday, more than three times that of any other recent week.
OU EST L'EUROPE? Face au forfait russe, l'Europe sans force (Le Monde 18.03.2014)
OU EST L'EUROPE?
Face au forfait russe, l'Europe sans force
LE MONDE | • Mis à jour le
Vladimir Poutine a tout lieu d'être satisfait. Les Européens ont réagi a minima au forfait que le président russe vient de commettre en Crimée. Moscou a découpé une partie de l'Ukraine, pays indépendant, et les Européens font profil bas. Cette situation est dangereuse.
Venant après une première série de sanctions – sur le gel des visas et des investissements –, celles qui ont été décidées, lundi 17 mars à Bruxelles, par les vingt-huit membres de l'Union européenne restent cosmétiques. Elles se résument à quelques mesures de représailles individuelles à l'encontre de vingt et une personnes : députés et chefs militaires russes, dirigeants de Crimée mis en place par le Kremlin – des seconds couteaux. Les Etats-Unis sont allés plus loin, en s'en prenant à des personnalités de l'entourage direct de M. Poutine.
Comme souvent en politique étrangère, la décision, à Bruxelles, relève du plus petit dénominateur commun de pays aux tropismes différents. L'Europe du Sud tirait dans un sens (rien contre la Russie), celle du Nord dans un autre (fermeté face à M. Poutine), et, au milieu, l'Allemagne, la Grande-Bretagne et la Franceétaient incapables d'un choix clair.
MODIFICATION DES FRONTIÈRES ET SURENCHÈRE ULTRANATIONALISTE
Pêle-mêle, entrent ici en considération des paramètres qu'il serait trop simpliste de négliger. Une bonne partie de l'Europe dépend du gaz russe. La Russie, qui, hormis des hydrocarbures, des armes et de la vodka, ne produit presque rien, est aussi un formidable débouché pour les exportateurs européens.
Résultat : pour la deuxième fois après la Géorgie en 2008, la Russie a modifié les frontières du continent par la force sans en payer grand prix. Cela impose aux Européens, au minimum, de se tenir aujourd'hui fermement aux côtés de Kiev.
De par son histoire et sa population, la Crimée a une singularité russe affirmée. Mais un coup de force reste un coup force, fût-il consacré a posteriori par un référendum. Ramenés à leur simplicité brutale, les faits disent toute la vérité : déniant à Kiev la liberté de ses alliances commerciales, Moscou a puni l'Ukraine en s'emparant par la force d'une partie du territoire de ce pays.
C'est une violation du traité conclu en 1994 par Moscou sur l'intangibilité des frontières de l'Ukraine. C'est contraire à toutes les règles internationales. Enfin, l'affaire a été menée dans une ambiance de surenchère ultranationaliste entretenue à Moscou par les médias russes au service du pouvoir. Comme s'il fallait préparer l'opinion à d'autres aventures militaires – en Ukraine, dans les régions russophones de l'est du pays, par exemple.
L'UE affirme avoir voulu préserver les chances d'un dialogue avec Moscou sur l'avenir de l'Ukraine. Elle prend le risque que le Kremlin interprète la mollesse de sa réaction comme un signe de faiblesse. L'Europe aura alors incité M. Poutine àpoursuivre le démembrement de son voisin ukrainien.
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